


love is just like breathing when it's true

by whyyesitscar



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2019-12-03
Packaged: 2021-02-13 03:10:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21487378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whyyesitscar/pseuds/whyyesitscar
Summary: beau told nott that her confession wouldn't change anything, but that was a big fucking lie.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett & Nott, Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett
Comments: 70
Kudos: 527





	1. beau

**Author's Note:**

> unbetaed, unedited, written in three hours, knock yourselves out (and enjoy)
> 
> lyrics + title by the indigo girls

_and i don't know how you show such gentle disregard_  
_for the ugly in me that i see that for so long i took so hard._  
_but i truly believe that you see the best in me;_  
_i'm enough for your love and the thought sets me free in you._

/

It becomes a bit of a routine.

Not a daily thing or even weekly, but when they can. When they have some downtime, it’s secrets and shots. She’s never really talked to Nott this much before, having written her off as hard to talk to. She is, sometimes. Nott is loud, quick to judge, and a _big_ interrupter. But she’s a mother, too; she can turn on a dime and suddenly she only has sensitive and safe words to offer. Beau supposes that’s the quiet half of the Chaos Crew—something has to balance out all the pranks and near arrests.

(Still. What you say can be just as chaotic as what you do).

/

She likes to think that as much as Nott has drawn thoughtfulness and honesty out of her, Beau has helped Nott appreciate silence and calm. Beau hasn’t worried about Nott and Caleb running off together for a long time, but even so she rarely sits still. Nott is always keeping an eye on other patrons in a bar, or people in a crowd; she rarely walks anywhere, preferring instead to leap from shadow to shadow. She’s so sneaky that sometimes Beau thinks she must be creating the shadows.

Beau finds herself taking watches with Nott more often. Jester brushes it off the first few times but when it becomes a regular occurence, she starts throwing Beau sad looks. It almost works; Beau almost caves. But night is a dangerous time, when the moon is bright and the world is asleep. That’s when Beau is at her softest, when Jester could absolutely bowl her over. (Truthfully she could do it anytime, but at night Beau would let her). So Beau makes sure they’re still regular best friends during the day, and on nights when Beau isn’t keeping watch. But ever so slightly, a wall begins to rise.

/

“Okay, you owe me a secret if I can climb up that tree in under ten seconds.”

“Five seconds.”

“Seven seconds.”

“...Alright.”

Beau is off and running before Nott even stops talking, really. She counts in her head as she jumps from branch to branch, making sure she gets at least two branches further before she gets to the next number. It’s a close call, but Beau touches the top of the tree just as Nott whisper-yells, “Seven! Fuck!”

She takes a bit longer coming down, sliding where she can and jumping where she has to. Her hands are never scraped or calloused anymore, having taken so much wear already. Still, she claps the dirt off of them.

“Alright, spill,” she says, sitting back down next to Nott.

Nott takes a long sip from her flask and pretends to think. “One time, when he was just a baby, a little bit of Luc’s pee got into one of Yeza’s experiments and it almost blew up his lab.”

“Wh—okay, one: that’s pretty fucking funny, but two: that’s not a secret. It’s just a really good story.”

“Yeza doesn’t know what really happened; he thinks he just miscalculated a chemical ratio.”

Beau narrows her eyes. “Hmm, that’s...yeah, okay. Whatever. That works.”

“Perfect,” Nott mutters. She rubs her hands together and that never precedes anything good. “Now it’s my turn.”

“You’re definitely not gonna make it up that tree faster than me.”

“No, no; of course not.” Nott brandishes her crossbow and Beau, in spite of her monk training and reflexes, flinches and leans back. “Calm down, I’m not going to shoot you.”

“Okay, well, you have before. I’m just sayin’.”

“After all we’ve been through since then, give me a little credit.”

“After all we’ve been through? Absolutely the fuck not.”

“Alright, alright.” Nott swings her crossbow up, stopping a little when it lines up with Beau’s face, and eventually settles on pointing at a pinecone hanging from a tree about a hundred and fifty yards away. “One secret if I hit it, one secret and one answer if the pinecone sticks to the tree behind it.”

Beau cranes her head, assessing the angle the shot would require. “Okay, sure.”

Nott laughs to herself and steadies her weapon against her shoulder, taking a few slow breaths before firing.

Of course it sticks in the tree.

Nott hisses in triumph. “Okay, okay.” She cups her chin in her hands and opens her eyes wide. “Spill.”

“Uh…” Beau picks at what little grass is still trying to grow in this cold weather. “I, uh, I have a brother.”

“What! Hang on, hang on. You’re going through a period of deep _emotional_ turmoil, and your secret is that you have a brother?”

“I could have two turmoils, you ever think of that? I could have seven turmoils! You don’t know!”

Nott grunts, high-pitched and raspy. “Fine. That’s fine. I still get a question.”

“Ask away; I don’t know anything about him so I won’t be able to tell you much.”

“No, I don’t care about that.” Nott squints and leans her face closer to Beau’s. “When you said before, that your feelings about Jester weren’t serious—were you lying?”

“Come on, man.” Beau turns away, blinking back tears against the moonlight. Nott’s sharp, spindly fingers scratch their way up her back in an attempt at a comforting gesture. “I mean, you know, you’d never be able to tell if I was lying without asking because I’m that good, right? I’m genuinely that good. But yeah.” She shrugs. Nott holds on. “‘Course I was lying.”

Nott doesn’t say anything. Beau can hear her lean back for a second before pressing into her side, Nott’s ears twitching against Beau’s shoulder like a cat.

When Fjord and Caduceus wake and ask them if anything happened, Beau and Nott both lie.

/

Everything explodes when they get Yasha back.

Beau catches Jester watching her more and more—in the first few hours, as they deal with a brainwashed Yasha; during the first week, as they help her through her guilt; at the end of the month, when they make it back to the Xhorhaus for a much-needed rest. It takes three of them just to convince Yasha to even go into her room. Jester keeps her eyes on Beau almost the whole time.

She watches her during the day and waits for her at night. Sleeping in their room has never been tenser. Beau can feel Jester’s eyes on her back and she thanks her training for the ability to fall asleep quickly. She’s legitimately asleep by the time Jester would work up the courage to ask questions. It feels bad lying to her friend, even if this isn’t really lying. But worse than Jester rejecting her romantically would be losing her entirely, and that can’t happen if nothing changes. Beau works as hard as she possibly can to ensure it doesn’t.

Some things are just out of her control, in the end.

Jester, it seems, has been doing more at night than just hoping Beau won’t fall asleep. Almost two months after they get Yasha back, and just when Beau is about to drift off, Jester turns on the light by her bed.

“Beau!” she whispers aggressively.

Beau turns onto her back, covering her eyes with her hand. “Jes, it’s late. I was almost asleep.”

“I know; you had, like, thirty seconds left, I think.”

Beau sits up just a little. “Have you been timing me?”

“You snore, you know. I think that’s what happens when you make yourself go to sleep instead of just letting it happen.”

“I snore at the exact same time every night?”

“Duh.”

Beau smiles in spite of herself. Jester gasps almost immediately.

“See, that! God, I missed that. You haven’t smiled at me like that in a long time.”

Oh, fuck—they’re just diving straight in.

“Oh, fuck,” Beau huffs. She drops her head to her pillow and sighs, lifting up her blanket after a few moments. “Okay, come on, let’s do this.”

Jester giggles and hops up onto Beau’s bed. Instead of cuddling next to her, however, she drags the blanket to the end of the bed and sits cross-legged facing Beau. Beau pulls herself up and mirrors Jester’s position at the opposite end.

“You gonna let me go cold?” Beau teases.

Jester grins. “I’m always cold, you know that. I need more blankets than you.”

“Right, my mistake. How could I forget?”

Jester smiles to herself this time, soft and sad. “It kind of feels like you did, though. Forget about me.”

This is exactly what Beau was afraid of. Thirty seconds more and she would have been in the clear. Instead, she’s melting.

“Forget you? Jester, I—”

“Do you like Yasha?”

“What?” Beau sits up straighter, scoffing and shaking her head. “Of course I like Yasha; she’s family, she’s part of the Nein.”

“No, I don’t mean like that. I mean, do you like her romantically.”

“Oh.”

“Because I thought that’s what it was,” Jester continues. “I thought that’s why you stopped talking to me sometimes, because you had feelings for Yasha and you wanted to help her instead. But you don’t really seem to spend more time with her than anyone else, so I don’t know, really. I was just curious.”

“Jester…” Beau scoots up further, flattens her pillows against her headboard. “It’s complicated,” she explains, “and I don’t want it to sound like I’m saying that to try and shut this down because I’m not. It really just is complicated.”

“I have time, Beau,” Jester says softly. “It’s only you and me right now.”

Beau smiles and sniffs, once again surprised by a swell of strong feelings. “I think that’s my favorite part, you know? How it’s always just you and me. After everyone else goes to sleep, or before anyone wakes up, hell—if I have to choose, I’d choose you. Every time.”

“I know.”

“And it just happened so fast, you know? I’ve been burned by so many people—my family, friends I thought I had, people I thought I loved. And then all of a sudden I’m in Trostenwald with two Coast kids and I feel like I have people again. And maybe it was Molly, maybe he happened and something kind of flipped inside me, but. I didn’t know it was possible to like this many people at once because I haven’t ever done that before.”

Jester’s already crying, probably started as soon as Beau spoke. She reaches her hand across the bed. It doesn’t stretch all the way to Beau’s, so Jester leans forward until it does.

Beau looks up and exhales, just in case she starts crying, too.

“That night on the ship,” she continues, swallowing around what has to be a whole fucking boulder in her throat. “I hadn’t said ‘I love you’ to anyone in years, and I said it to you after, what, four months? And god, I meant it.”

Jester nods and wipes a few tears from her cheeks. She takes in a big breath, talking as she puffs it out. “It kind of feels like you love me a little less now.”

“What?” Beau furrows her brows and looks closer at Jester, waiting to see a smile or anything that says, ‘Gotcha!’; that says this is a joke. Nothing happens. “That’s really—you feel that way? You’ve _been_ feeling that way?” Jester nods, reluctantly, after a long pause. “God, I suck.” She can’t help the tears this time and they fall absolutely without her control or consent, big and fast.

“Oh my god, Beau…”

“Don’t say that, Jester.” Beau presses the heels of her hands into her eyes, willing everything to go back inside. (It doesn’t). She keeps pressing and folds at the waist, making herself as small as possible, squeezing her chest to her lap for at least ten seconds. She stays there until she can feel Jester reaching out again.

“Please don’t,” she mumbles, her words trapped against the rest of her body. Presumably, Jester retracts her hand. Beau sniffs a few times, swats at her eyes before sitting up. She looks at Jester and wishes she hadn’t.

“I’m really sorry,” she says. It’s garbled and heavy and Beau barks a laugh before clearing her throat. “This is so—I’ve been so fucking stupid about all of this. I told Nott I didn’t want her to change anything and look at what I just went and fucking did…”

“Nott?” Jester sits up and scrunches her nose, genuinely confused and momentarily removed from the seriousness of the conversation. “What does Nott have to do with this?”

Beau waves a hand. “Don’t worry about it; I’ll tell you everything later if you still want to hear it. But I—okay.” She sits up straight again, scratches at the nape of her neck. “Okay, I’m just gonna—it needs to—okay. Here’s the thing. Sometime in the last nine months, I caught a big case of the feelings for you. I mean, I love you in a big way. A big, romantic...way.”

Jester rests a hand on her knee and Beau stops talking. “It’s okay, Beau. I get it.”

“Do you?”

“No.” Jester shakes her head, laughing. “I mean, sort of. It’s...complicated?”

“Yeah,” Beau smiles, “it is.”

They sit there for a few minutes, looking at each other, laughing occasionally. For once, Jester’s tears dry up before Beau’s.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you cry before,” Jester eventually says. “You’re very pretty at it.”

“I am?”

Jester nods. “Some people are ugly criers. I think Fjord probably is. Nott _definitely_ is.”

“You’re not,” Beau murmurs.

“I know. And now I know you’re not either.” Jester slips her legs over the side of the bed. Her back cracks as she stands up, groaning through a few stretches. She sits back down next to Beau, pushing her over until there’s almost enough room for the two of them.

She leans her head onto Beau’s shoulders and reaches down to take her hand. Jester’s horns fit perfectly into the curve of her neck. “You have to tell me the scary stuff, Beau; that’s what I’m here for. I love you so it won’t be scary.”

“Yeah. Okay. I might ask you to remind me once in a while.”

Jester giggles and squeezes Beau’s hand. “If you hadn’t been avoiding me, I could have reminded you sooner.”

“Okay, you know what, we can let some of this go.”

“Okay.”

Jester shifts onto her side, taking Beau with her as she wraps the hand already holding onto Beau around her stomach. Jester gathers the blanket with her other hand and wraps it around both of them.

“Your light’s still on,” Beau mumbles into her pillow.

“Who cares; you’re almost asleep anyway.”

“Am not,” Beau counters, but she’s lying again.

Jester pulls the blanket up even further so it covers Beau’s eyes a little. For a moment, Jester’s hand is near Beau’s cheek and she leaves it there—swiping her thumb across Beau’s temple, tickling a finger across her nose. She nestles in a little closer and Beau is pretty sure she feels the ghost of a kiss on the back of her neck.

“I know it’s complicated, Beau,” Jester whispers. “But, I love you big, too. Maybe it could be simple.”

Beau falls asleep with a smile on her face.


	2. jester

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> should have gone to sleep, did this instead. one of these days i'll write a jestergard fic in more than three hours, but today is not that day. this is definitely just gonna be a two-parter though
> 
> again, lyrics at the beginning are the premiere gays themselves, the indigo girls.
> 
> have fun and enjoy all the fluff

_come on home; the team you're hitched to has a mind of its own_   
_but it's just the forces of your past you've fought before._   
_(come back here and shut the door.)_   
_i'm stacking sandbags against the river of your troubles._

/

She wakes up before the sun does.

Technically the sun never rises in Xhorhas, but she still understands time like it does. Her momma used to tell her that the sun only woke up when she did, and Jester believed her for a long time. Like, she still kind of does, only now she only talks about it when Beau is around. Beau laughs, but she never tells Jester’s she’s wrong, so. Maybe the sun here is waiting for her after all.

If it did rise, the sun would be very close to rising anyway. The sky looks different every time they come back to this house, but today it resembles Beau’s expositor robes. Jester wonders about that sometimes, how she thinks about Beau when she thinks about blue. There are lots of blue things—her dad, water, Jester herself.

And yet.

Beau is warm underneath her, buried in blankets and Jester’s arms. She’s snuggled closer sometime in the night and this could be a normal night where they share a bed just because, except for the tear tracks Jester can still see, sticky and faint on Beau’s cheeks. Jester smiles to herself, proud that she got to see Beau cry before Beau saw her get angry, even though they weren’t really having a race about it or anything. It’s definitely the kind of race they might have had, if either of them had thought about it.

Jester leans forward, pressing herself against the back of Beau’s head. Beau doesn’t really smell good—like, she doesn’t try to smell good but she’s not Caleb either—but it’s...Jester’s gotten used to it. Caduceus smells earthy, Yasha smells like rain and metal. Fjord still smells like the ocean, even after everything, and Nott smells like gunpowder and Caleb just smells. Beau smells like—like wherever they are, and also like pencils and sweat. The sweat part is Beau, but the pencil part is definitely Jester, and it’s not even that Jester is just smelling herself because that’s what Beau’s hair smells like now.

She didn’t even get a chance to take it down from its bun, which she’s usually so good about. _Otherwise it kinks at night, Jester, and then I have to use a bunch of oil to get it neat again, and that shit is just really annoying to get off my hands_. Beau had told her that all the way back in Alfield, and Jester had said _I’m sure that’s really hard for you_, only she didn’t mean it at all, and they’ve been best friends ever since.

But she knows how much it actually bugs Beau when it’s bumpy, so she gently unties the ribbon and unfurls Beau’s hair. She runs her fingers through it, straightening it at first and then just because it feels nice. Beau hums and squeezes Jester’s hand but she doesn’t wake up.

Beau is very handsome. She has nice hair and she smells fine and she’s smart and thoughtful and sometimes an asshole but who cares because also she can punch ghosts. And now Jester has seen Beau cry and she knows how pretty it is when tears get caught in Beau’s eyelashes; how her neck flushes when she’s upset and her fingers shake a little even though she tries very hard to hide it. Beau is a lot of things and none of this is how Jester thought it would be—not the who or the how and definitely not the why. But also it kind of is? Whoever wrote _Tusk Love_ could write a lot of books about Beau, and Jester would read them if only to have proof in writing that Beau is a good, worthy person. (To use as evidence when Beau forgets, of course).

That still wouldn’t capture the Beau that Jester loves—which is every Beau, really, but also there is one made just for her. And Beau was right. It’s big and it’s romantic and it’s probably overwhelming, given how quickly Beau fell asleep afterwards. But Jester doesn’t feel overwhelmed because she has nothing to compare it to. More than anything, Jester has spent her time since leaving Nicodranas learning new and different ways to love people.

Anyway. Jester is in love and the sun-that-isn’t-really-there has risen and Beau is awake.

She takes a big breath and rolls over in Jester’s arms. Jester gets a mouthful of hair halfway through.

“Beau!”

“Sorry.”

Jester watches Beau blink a few times, big and slow and so different from how she springs up for a watch. Beau is rarely sleepy, so Jester will just have to appreciate what she can get.

“Do you like pet names?” she asks quietly.

“What?” Beau shakes her head a little and scratches her cheek. “Say that again?”

Jester huffs. “You know, like ‘sweetheart’ or ‘baby’ or ‘my love’? Things like that.”

“Uhh…”

“Because I was thinking about it and it doesn’t really feel right but if you like them then we can try it out.”

Beau doesn’t say anything but she does sit up, scooting back against the headboard like she had last night. “Sorry, I—what are you talking about?”

“You know, cute couple things.”

“Like, us?”

“Yeah.”

“Like, us-us?”

“Duh.”

“Fuck, man.” She flops down on the bed, perpendicular to the frame, her long legs resting flat on the floor. Beau drags her hands down her face and laughs a few times, short and sleep-rumbly. “I honestly can’t believe this is real.”

“Don’t you want it to be?”

“Jester, this is so fucking rad I might literally explode.” She uncovers her eyes, rests one of her arms on her forehead, and smiles. Maybe she winks, or Jester might just be imagining it because it seems like a cool, Beau thing to do. “C’mere,” she murmurs, and reaches a hand toward Jester.

Jester takes it and scoots toward Beau, waiting, but Beau doesn’t do anything. She just plays with Jester’s fingers, smiling at her and blushing, and eventually her hand creeps its way up Jester’s arm, past her shoulder and onto her chest. Jester has a very plain collar on her nightshirt, sewn for practice when she didn’t have anything to do before the Nein. There are small buttons that always look like they’re going to come off, but Beau is gentle when she grips them, sliding two fingers in the gap between two of them.

“C’mere,” she says again, only this time it’s deeper, and there’s a smirk as she guides Jester down for a kiss.

_Tusk Love_ taught Jester things about love that her momma hadn’t, and she used to think it was everything. But Beau’s kiss is different; it isn’t a novel or a story from the Chateau. It’s like—Jester has never felt so relaxed in her life, relaxed and appreciated and cared for. Jester sinks into Beau until she’s lying across her, safe and warm with one of Beau’s arms wrapped around her middle, the other cradling her head. Jester hasn’t kissed anyone like this (she’s barely kissed anyone at all), and she’ll certainly get better at it. But for now, this is the best she’s ever felt.

She pulls away eventually, once the heady haze of romance disappears and she really registers what Beau’s morning breath tastes like.

Jester rests her head on Beau’s chest, listening to the reliable thump of her heart. “You need to brush your teeth,” she mumbles.

“Right back atcha.” Beau chuckles and Jester can’t resist joining in, not when her head is following the bounce of Beau’s laughter. “Worth the suffering though, right?”

“Oh, for sure. I would gladly suffer for that again.”

“Dope.”

Jester flicks Beau on the nose, maybe a little harder than necessary, but—she’s a monk and she can take it. She slides up a little, just enough so she can lay on her stomach and look at Beau. She props her chin on her hands and smiles, wider and wider. Beau mimics her until they laugh again.

“We should probably talk about this,” Beau says, sitting up herself.

“Okay.” Jester shrugs, twists her ankles together and sways just a bit. “I don’t really know what we need to talk about.”

“Well.” Beau pats her pants and then looks to the nightstand, tying her hair back up when she finds her ribbon. “I’m pretty sure we’re there but I just want to say some stuff to make sure we’re on the same page. You know, slower and with less crying this time. And then we can make out until someone bangs the door down. Okay?”

Jester smiles so wide her fangs peek out. “Okay.”

“Okay.” She closes her eyes and breathes in. For a moment, Jester can see the monk she was trained to be. Beau smiles when she looks at Jester, calm and soft. “I love you,” she says, “because of who you are and who you make me want to be. Through loving you I’m starting to understand what in me is worth loving. I will love you in whatever way you want or need me to, but I really hope that we can take this—us—somewhere big and new, because we really fucking deserve it.”

“Beau, oh my _god_.”

“What?”

“If you ever propose to me I want you to remember everything you just said; that was so romantic! Beau! I’m telling Fjord about you.”

“What? No!”

“Somebody else has to know about this, Beau, that was so good!”

“No, this is—this is the part of me that only you get. Okay, well.” She huffs and rolls her eyes. “_One_ of the parts of me that only you get. But it is a _big one_. I’m romantic for no one but you.”

“This is not helping, Beau; you sound like you’re straight out of a romance novel…”

“I can’t help it! You’re beautiful and amazing and I love you so much!”

“_Beau!_”

“Fuck!” Beau covers her eyes with her hands again and shakes her head. “I gotta—you talk now, I’m gonna fucking lose it.”

Jester pauses for a moment, giggling at how worked up Beau is getting. She’s pressing her fingers so hard against her eyelids that the tips are almost white. Her jaw is clenched and her right leg has started to bounce against the bed, brushing Jester’s knee every time it moves. It’s so—this is how Jester was with Bluud when she was younger, open and silly and extreme. Beau is anxious like an adolescent, in a way that she never is because even though she’s loose and carefree she always carries herself with intention.

Beau shifts the fingers of one hand, peeking an eye out between the gap. “Are you gonna say something?”

“Yes.”

“...Okay?”

Jester giggles one more time and gently pries Beau’s hands from her face. “I won’t tell anyone about you,” she promises, “even though I think they would love and appreciate you even more if I did. Not the same way I do, you know, but still. I won’t tell.”

“Thanks.”

“Um, you know, I haven’t been in love with anyone before, so I don’t _really_ know how it’s supposed to feel. But, my dad loved my mom a lot, even if he didn’t stay, and he said he ran away to protect her. And I know that’s how I feel about you, like, I would do anything to make sure you were okay. Which I guess is kind of how I feel about the rest of the Mighty Nein, but you’re different. You’re more important because I can feel how you love me, and the greatest gift I can think of is to try to give that back. So. You know.” She shrugs and takes Beau’s hand. “Let’s fucking go for it, man.”

Beau throws her head back and laughs. “Okay, okay. Come on.” She stands up and guides Jester up with her by their linked hands.

“What are you doing?”

“The bed is too limiting; come on. Stand up.”

“Okay, okay. Sheesh.”

Jester stands up and smooths the hem of her nightshirt. She fiddles with her fingers until Beau stops her.

Beau squeezes her hands—once, twice, then she cradles Jester’s cheeks between her palms. “You love me,” she says simply.

“Yeah.”

“And I love you.”

“I know.”

She shrugs. “Then that’s it.” And before Jester can say anything else, Beau pulls her in for a mind-blowing kiss. That’s probably how they’re all going to be in the beginning, but even Jester can tell that this one is special. She makes a little noise, high-pitched and in the back of her throat, and feels Beau start to smile. Suddenly, standing still isn’t enough and Beau walks them forward until Jester bumps into something solid. The dresser, probably. Beau leans into it and kisses her even deeper.

“Is this the making out part?” she asks, grabbing a big breath of air while she can.

“Mhm.” Jester can feel Beau vibrate against her lips.

“That’s—oh!” Beau’s hands slide under her shirt. Her palms are warm and broad on Jester’s back and she feels like melting. “Wow, you should have been touching me like that this whole time.”

Beau separates their lips and smiles. “Noted.” She pulls away just a little further. “This is cool, right? I don’t want to go too fast or anything; I know it’s a lot.”

“I will let you know when it’s too fast, I promise. But for now…” Jester leans forward and kisses Beau slowly, nicking her bottom lip with a fang on the way out.

Beau actually hisses, squeezing her eyes shut. “Fuck. Okay. Also noted.” She leans in again and Jester does melt this time.

And then, of course, the knocking starts.

“Beau! Jester! Are you aliiiive?!” Nott screams. “Essek wants to talk to us!”

Beau leans her forehead against Jester’s, scratching her nails ever so slightly against her spine. “Damn it,” she grumbles.

“It’s okay, Beau,” Jester whispers. Then, louder: “We’re fine, Nott! We just, um, we need to get dressed.”

There is a long pause; but for the scratching at the door, Jester would have thought Nott had left. “...Why wouldn’t you be dressed?” she asks slowly.

“Because we just fucking woke up?” Beau yells back.

Another pause. “I don’t believe you,” Nott eventually says. “I’m picking the lock.”

“Wh—no! The fuck you’re not, Nott!”

Jester laughs. “It’s not locked.”

“Don’t tell her that!” Beau says as she pinches Jester’s side.

“Too late!” Nott shouts triumphantly. Her face falls in shock as she looks at Jester and Beau, her eyes flitting quickly in between them.

“Oh my _god!_”

“Nott…”

“No, no! Take your time!” She backs slowly into the hallway, closing the door behind her as she goes. “I’ll just tell everyone else you’re still getting ready and will come down for breakfast soon, and I will definitely _not_ say anything else. Not a thing but plain old breakfast talk.” The door clicks and they hear Nott scurry off, her nails clacking against the floor.

“Five gold says she tells everyone by the end of the day.”

Beau scoffs. “Fuck, she’s not making it to lunch.”

Jester smiles. “We’ll see.”


End file.
